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The present paper reports the instrumental analysis of the unstressed variants of /iː/, /uː/, /eː/, /oː/, /æː/ and /ɑː/. The study was carried out by employing the sound analysis software PRAAT, which was used to measure the length and tenseness of the specified variants. 10 residents of Vilnius city and 10 hosts of TV/radio programmes covering serious public topics were selected as the informants of the study. The main aims of this research were as follows: (1) to determine whether vowel length and tenseness differentiate the pronunciation of Vilnius city residents from that of the hosts of TV/radio programmes covering serious public topics, and (2) to reveal whether the hosts of TV/radio programmes use the length or tenseness of the unstressed variants of /iː/, /uː/, /eː/, /oː/, /æː/, /ɑː/ as a resource for creating a formal and serious speaking style. The current study examines, among other things, if the TV/radio hosts pronounce the unstressed variants of /iː/, /uː/, /eː/, /oː/, /æː/, /ɑː/ systematically more tensely, or perhaps on the contrary – they create the impression of a serious style only with isolated sounds of increased tenseness. The analysis has revealed that the hosts of TV/radio programmes covering serious topics pronounce the unstressed variants of /iː/, /uː/, /eː/, /oː/, /æː/ and /ɑː/ in the same length as Vilnius city residents speaking in a semi-formal style. Hence, vowel length in the said programmes is not a significant linguistic resource when creating a serious and formal speaking style and constructing the linguistic identity of a TV/radio host addressing serious public topics. However, TV/radio hosts covering serious public topics pronounce the unstressed variants of /iː/, /uː/, /eː/, /oː/, /æː/ and /ɑː/ with more tenseness than Vilnius city residents, which suggests that the style of the hosts is distinct from the semi-formal speaking style of Vilnius city residents and serves as a well-defined marker of a certain language standard. These findings are in line with some previous studies indicating that vowel tenseness statistically significantly distinguishes programmes covering serious public topics from entertainment-based programmes covering personal topics. Therefore, it can be argued that vowel tenseness differentiates speakers (TV/radio hosts vs. Vilnius city residents), types of programmes (programmes covering serious public topics vs. entertainment-based programmes covering personal topics), styles (formal vs. semi-formal), and language varieties (actual standard language vs. Vilnius speech). Thus, in the speech of hosts of TV/radio programmes covering serious public topics, tenseness acquires the indexical meaning of “I am speaking seriously”. The use of isolated vowels of increased tenseness is thus sufficient to create the impression of a serious speaking style and to form the linguistic identity of a TV/radio host covering serious topics.

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The article focuses on the speaker evaluation experiment conducted in the spring of 2016 in Vilnius schools with Russian as the language of instruction. The aim of the experiment was to reveal the students’ subconscious attitudes (evaluations) and determine whether the four speaking styles of Vilnius, which had been distinguished conventionally for the purposes of the research, were recognized by the respondents and what social meanings the styles were associated with. The same experiment was conducted in 2014 in Vilnius schools with Lithuanian as the language of instruction. The study proved the hypothesis that there was a clear hierarchy of the speech styles differentiated by the variants of /i/, /u/, /i + R/, /u + R/ of different duration used in a stressed position. The styles are socially significant to ethnic Lithuanian school students and function as markers of social personality types associated with different personality traits, professions and ethnicity. This year’s experiment is based on the assumption that the social stigma created by standardization ideology and associated with Slavic speakers has affected the subconscious attitudes of students from Russian schools so much that Vilnius speech styles will evoke to them similar associations to those of the students of Lithuanian origin; in other words, phonetic variants which distinguish the styles are likely to identify the same social types of speakers.The research has proved the initial hypothesis. The style Kam+GalSL used by Vilnius city dwellers of Slavic origin tends to be perceived as revealing a Slavic background but does not serve as a marker of high social status and high professional competence. Therefore, even though the participants of the experiment attend Russian schools, their linguistic attitudes are not lingo-centric, namely, they are involved in the same field of social meanings as the Lithuanian school students (such social meanings as non-Lithuanian, less educated, having a poorer job are chosen when reflecting on the Slavic pronunciation). Therefore, the respondents may apply the same ideological scheme on the subconscious level while evaluating the speech of a group to which they belong according to the distinguished features of stimuli. Additional social meanings of this style include otherness (weird), poor communicational skills (poor speaker), low social status and working-class professions indicating meanings (laborer, janitor, market dealer).It seems that the variability of duration in stressed /i/, /u/, /i + R/, /u + R/, which is typical of Lithuanian city dwellers in Vilnius, acquires a different value among Russians speakers in Vilnius. The Kam speaking style, originating from a dialect and distinguished by phonetic variants, is associated with a lower social value in comparison with the styles Kam+GalLT and Neu, which include strongly stigmatized phonetic variants, associated with the speech of Vilnius city dwellers. Both styles Kam+GalLT and Neu are associated with a social type of a speaker of high social status, substantial income, leading positions and high professional competence; however, their sub-types of association are different. Representatives of the Kam speaking style are characterized as provincial, of lower status, working-class professions and representatives of the services area.

The paper focuses on vowel lengthening in Vilnius speech. This feature has been stigmatised by Lithuanian language planners as a feature of Slavic origin, which has influenced Vilnius speech and therefore has to be avoided as non-standard and incorrect. The aim of the study was to find out how frequent the lengthening of short vowels is in the speech of Vilnius and how it depends on linguistic and social factors and self-monitoring of speech. The research is based on the classical Labovian interview with seventeen second and third generation residents of Vilnius (aged 18–40), 4.5 hours of speech in total.The research has shown that vowel lengthening is far from common in Vilnius speech. It depends largely on the type of syllable and the place of stress; the lengthening mostly affects just stressed syllables and usually in word stem. The lengthening of short inflectional endings, which is highly associated with Russian or Polish accent and regarded as the worst feature of urban speech, seems to be extremely rare. It has also been shown that the tendency to lengthen manifests itself quite consistently; informants who lengthen stressed vowels in the stem of the word more often than others tend to lengthen syllables at the end of the word. This applies to all contextual styles.In spite of relatively big individual difference in speech of informants, the research revealed that vowel lengthening in Vilnius speech is mostly used by the oldest of our informants and by men more than women. The dependence of vowel lengthening on contextual style turned out to be quite controversial and may point to the development of different speech norms in Vilnius.